Tempt the Stars

Chapter Fifteen

As Rian had predicted, we reached the city at nightfall. And once again I felt it, the massive disconnect between everything I’d ever known and everything I was experiencing. It had been happening a lot lately, dating from the first time I’d shifted, going from a world of electricity and glass skyscrapers and the rule of law, to one filled with torchlight and stone castles and the rule of one man’s caprice.

That had been a shock.

That had taken some adjustment.

This was worse.

The desert abruptly ended at a jagged cliff with an almost sheer drop-off down what looked like maybe a few thousand feet. A jumble of vehicles lay scattered around the entrance to a stone bridge way too narrow for my liking. It stretched over the precipice like a slender finger, too tight for anything but foot traffic. And on the other side, a triangular spar of land held a city so old and so massive it made human metropolises look like toys in comparison.

We lined up with everyone else, including their smaller animals and handcarts, and went across, while a wicked wind plucked at our clothes like hungry hands and howled a warning in our ears. It didn’t help that the damned bridge was open on the sides, with just a flimsy railing between us and an epic free fall. Someone up ahead didn’t keep hold of a fat barnyard bird, and had it torn out of her hands by the wind, to flutter out over the void for a second before dropping like a stone.

I didn’t watch it fall.

“Is something wrong?” Rian asked me, in Casanova’s voice. She’d merged with him a few miles out, making it harder to communicate, since they tended to talk over each other in the same body. But it was necessary. Inside a body, even her own people had trouble recognizing her. They could tell what she was, if they were paying attention, but not who.

At least, we really hoped they couldn’t.

“This . . . isn’t exactly what I expected,” I confessed, staring down to where a river blazed gold with the last light of whatever passed for a sun, cutting a vivid scar across faceless red sand. There were some little black specks on it.

I realized with a jolt that they were boats.

“What did you expect?” She sounded curious.

“Something more like the Shadowland,” I said, talking about the demon world where the council met and where Rosier had a small, secondary court for when it was in session. It wasn’t like earth, but at least it was nice and compact, a small trade city in a twilit world, with everything and everyone close at hand.

It could have fit into the plaza we stumbled into on the bridge’s other side.

Like the fortress that towered overhead, it was dull red and gleaming under the last of the day’s sallow light. It was also jam-packed despite the size, and noisy, with people chatting, animals bellowing, bells on hems and bridles jangling, and our camel shaking off a wheelbarrow full of fine red dust all over us.

Most people started lining up to be allowed past the massive, studded gate maybe ten stories high, which appeared to be the only entrance through the main walls. But we shuffled off to the side with a few hundred others who apparently needed a break. Shaking sand out of our hair and clothes, we joined a queue for one of the shallow fountains on either side of the plaza.

A lot of the camel things, and a lot of the people, were drinking right out of the enormous basin, but we waited while Rian used vampire agility to grab us refills from higher up, where the first gush of water split the rust-colored rock.

“This . . . isn’t good,” Caleb rumbled in my ear.

And the understatement of the year award goes to, I thought, staring blankly around. But mostly up, up, up, at the nine walls within walls that made up the colossal fortress towering above us. It was so big it blocked out the last of the light, casting long shadows that bathed everything in smudged ochre.

“Rose red city half as old as time,” Caleb murmured.

“What?”

“Just a quote about a city on earth once.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that on earth.”

“And you won’t.” For some reason, he didn’t look as impressed as I was. “Human society is too fluid to have built up something like that. It would have been razed at some far earlier stage by a conqueror, or made obsolete by new technology. That must have taken thousands of years to build by a people stuck in one phase of existence and not allowed to move on.”

“Maybe they don’t want to move on.”

Caleb shot me a look. “And maybe their overlords won’t allow it, since it would make them harder to govern. Harder to control.” His lip curled. “I’m beginning to understand why John hates this place.”

He looked like he’d have said more, but Rian was back, thrusting overflowing canteens into our dusty hands. I drank some water, swirled it around my mouth, and spat it out, trying to get sand to stop cracking between my teeth. It didn’t work.

“All right, now do you understand?” Casanova hissed. It was always easy to tell when he was talking; Rian’s careful, measured voice and graceful movements gave way to wilder gestures and harsher tones.

At least they did when he was talking to me.

I didn’t answer until we’d moved away from the crowd, closer to a small, built-up edge of stone, near the precipice. It was only about waist high, and the wind was something else, so I kept to the right side of the camel thing. But it didn’t help; it felt like we might both go flying at any moment.

I squatted down, and that was a little better, mainly because I couldn’t see the drop-off anymore.

“Now do I understand what?” I asked.

“Now do you understand how stupid this is?” Casanova demanded, squatting in front of me. “We need to get out of here before anyone recognizes us!”

“Recognizes?” I gestured around. “There’s got to be two, three thousand people just on this damned platform.”

“Yes, so with our luck, that should buy us about five minutes!”

“It’s not the recognizing that’s the problem,” Caleb said, his eyes on the gate. “They’re not checking everybody or even most people going in. It’s the getting out.”

“We’re not going to get out. We’re probably not even going to get in!” Casanova said, before Rian stopped his mouth with a canteen.

“We’ll get out like we got in,” I said, trying to reassure myself as much as them. “Mother said I should be able to open the gates between worlds, with or without the guard’s approval. It was her greatest gift.”

“Should be?” Casanova hissed, thrusting the canteen away. “You didn’t test it?”

“How am I supposed to test it, Casanova?” I hissed back. “Demons tend to take a dim view of people breaking into their courts!”

“Dimmer than Rosier when we try to steal his heir and then can’t get the hell out—”

The canteen was back.

“Mother said I could do it,” I repeated, slowly enough to hopefully get through that thick skull of his. “‘Should have’ was my phrasing and it was . . . poorly chosen. I’m sorry.”

I hoped an apology would calm him down, but of course not.

“If you’re sorry, then get me out of here!” he spluttered, shoving the canteen away and spraying water all over me.

“I’m not leaving him here!”

“He’s a demon lord! He can take care of himself! If he wants out, he’ll find a way—”

“It’s been six months, Carlos,” Rian said, causing him to change octaves and facial expressions midway through a sentence. It gave him a weird, schizophrenic tic, but I didn’t care. I was too busy trying to absorb what she was saying.

“Six months?”

“Time passes differently here,” she reminded me. “That is why your power doesn’t work. We are no longer in your time stream.”

“But six—”

“That is one reason I agreed to come with you. Lord Rosier has waited a long time for this. He isn’t going to lose his son again if he can help it.”

“Is that why there are so many guards?” Caleb demanded.

“No.” Rian glanced around, and for a second, I thought I saw her large, almond-shaped eyes sliding behind Casanova’s. “I’ve never seen so many all at once. It’s the only good sign.”

“Good?” Casanova asked himself. “How is that—”

He abruptly stopped when several indigo-robed guards broke away from a nearby group and came in our direction. They were muffled up more than the tourists, just sharp dark eyes and arched black eyebrows showing between their turbans and the veils they’d tucked into the necks of their robes. Which didn’t entirely obscure the no-nonsense curved swords at their sides.

I didn’t say anything, either, as they came closer. Or move. Or even breathe. I tried to tell myself to act natural, but it wasn’t working so great. And I wasn’t the only one. Suddenly, the only movement in our small group was the wind whipping our robes around, and the camel thing chewing on Casanova’s hair.

Until the guards passed by, and grabbed a couple of kids who had been playing on the rocky edge of the precipice. A frantic mother came up and retrieved them, already sobbing even before one of the men started telling her off. I swallowed sand and hung my head, and poured some of the water over my hot neck until they’d gone again.

“It is good,” Rian said, clearing her throat. “For it shows that the master is worried. There are at least three times the usual number of guards on duty, perhaps more. Something that would not be the case if he didn’t consider himself to be vulnerable.”

“He thinks we can do it,” I said, translating that.

“He thinks we’ll be stupid enough to try to do it,” Casanova corrected. “The guards are to make sure we don’t succeed!”

I stared at the gate, which had a huge, old-fashioned portcullis at the top, its jagged teeth cast in some kind of black metal. The tips glinted dully in the light’s last rays, as if they’d been dipped in blood. I glanced at Caleb, who was looking at them, too.

And unlike Casanova, he and I didn’t have an out. Rosier had promised Pritkin recently not to attempt to assassinate me again, but I wasn’t sure how that worked when I was the party on the offensive. But even if it did apply, it left a whole host of options wide-open—none of which I was likely to enjoy. And as for Caleb . .

“If you want to go back, I’ll understand,” I told him quietly.

He pursed his lips slightly, and shot me a glance. It almost looked like he was trying to hold back a grin, except that Caleb didn’t grin. It seemed to be against the war mage code or something. And because it would have been crazy under the circumstances.

“You going back?”

“No.” It wasn’t like this was going to get any easier later.

He stood up and stretched, corded muscles rippling under the thin material of the robes. “Guess I’ll go when you do.”

“Oh, for—God preserve me from brainless heroics!” Casanova snapped.

“Didn’t think you believed in God.”

“I believe in Satan,” he said, pushing the camel thing away from his hair. “I ought to. I’m standing on his bloody doorstep!”

If Satan’s doorstep was impressive, his atrium was breathtaking.

We passed through the gate into a chasm of a tunnel, the fading light from behind us washing along the ceiling like red water, too late in the day to really light our way, but too early for the lanterns that glinted in intervals overhead to be lit. I navigated by letting my fingertips trail over the rough, rocky surface of the nearest wall, which still held the heat of the day and probably would for hours considering the thickness of the stone. And felt some of that initial awe creep back.

Despite the air in here, which was pretty funky from too many bodies pressed too close together, and the constantly jostling crowd, and my seriously aching calf muscles, I still felt it—the weight of centuries pressing down like an extra atmosphere.

Caleb had been right; this place was old. Older than our pyramids, older than anything on earth. Maybe as old as this world itself, since there were chisel marks on the dark red stone, but no mortar lines that I could see. It was as if it had been carved instead of built. As if some giant had whittled away a mountain from the top down, leaving the pieces that fit his crazy blueprint and carrying away the rest.

It should have been impressive, and maybe if I was a tourist it would have been. As it was, it was more intimidating. I felt the knot in my stomach draw a little tighter, even before we stumbled out the other side a few minutes later.

Into something that looked a lot like a souk.

Shops lined streets going in all directions like spokes on a wheel. And selling everything from spices to live animals, bright metalware to gauzy clothing, pottery to vegetables, fish to leather goods, and wool to fresh-baked bread. Merchants called out offers to us new arrivals even as they tried to roll up the awnings over their shops, or light the lanterns strung like stars over the streets, or slap fresh meat onto grills, sending up mouth-watering aromas to tantalize our dust-covered taste buds. It was loud and raucous and crowded and strangely jolly, but Caleb didn’t appear enthralled.

“Servants, my ass,” he muttered.

It took me a moment to realize what he meant, because most of the people hanging around the gate, waiting for friends and family to come out, looked like a mix of those on the road. With one exception. A depressing number had what looked like slaves following along behind, thin men and women, and in some cases children, in bare feet and simple tunics, their arms reaching for packages and boxes or the reins of animals.

Most of the slaves didn’t look native. Some of them didn’t even look human. I was staring, probably rudely, at one with mottled blue skin and what looked like a few extra arms when Rian grabbed my sleeve.

Because yeah.

The guards were thick on the ground in here, too.

They were slightly less obvious, lounging by food stalls or interspersed with the crowd by the gate. But there were plenty of them, scanning the new arrivals with the watchfulness of cops and security forces everywhere. And they didn’t look like they missed much.

But they missed us, thanks to Caleb.

He waved a hand, sending a jolt of something to goose the last in a line of camels a little ways in front of us. It gave a startled bleat and crashed into the next in line, and then the whole group, already tense from the dark tunnel they’d just been through, were bellowing and bucking and scattering in all directions. The frantic driver and his boy ran after them, yelling for help, which they reluctantly got from some of the merchants with vulnerable piles of fruit and veg.

They didn’t get any from the guards.

But for a moment, everyone was watching the show instead of the line, and we slipped through.

“This way, quickly,” Rian said, pulling us out of the crush around the gate and into the more anonymous crowd.

Or, at least, that’s what it looked like she said. I couldn’t hear a damned thing. To the sounds of people talking and cart wheels squeaking and animals bleating and merchants cursing and music blaring from every tavern on every street had just been added a blast of horns from the higher walls, heralding the arrival of night.

I grabbed Rian’s arm, so I wouldn’t lose her, and gave up on subtlety. Nobody could hear me in all this anyway. “Where are they keeping him?” I yelled, only to have her nod at the street directly ahead of us. And say something I couldn’t make out, because I don’t have vampire hearing.

But then, maybe I didn’t need it.

Far above the smelly, raucous, lively streets was a long, low, elegant building of balconies and terraces and a few graceful towers. Patches of greenery interlaced the stone here and there, almost shocking in this landscape. What looked like fountains caught the last of the light in a few places. And while the place looked like it had also been carved out of the local stone, it must have come from a different strata. Because it was a pale, honey gold that shimmered against the darker layers all around, as if laced with gold dust.

If ever anything had screamed palace, that was it.

“It’s not behind the highest wall,” Caleb said, in my ear. As if he’d come to the same conclusion.

“So . . . that’s good at least.”

“Depends.”

I turned to look at him. “On what?”

“On what’s on those upper three levels.”

They were dark, now that the local sun had set, set into the cliffs under an overhang of stone, with just a few stray lights gleaming here and there ominously. Like a heavy brow over glittering eyes. I felt myself start to tense up again, even without knowing why.

And then I got a reason when Caleb gave me a massive shove from behind.

I stumbled and then hit the ground, wrenching a wrist and skinning my hands in the process. But I didn’t mind. Because a moment later, somebody in a swift-moving chariot tore through the souk—including the area where I’d just been standing. If I’d stayed where I was, I’d have been crushed under its wheels like the worldly belongings of one unfortunate immigrant.

The driver never even appeared to notice. I watched from the ground as he turned onto one of the spokelike streets radiating out from the hub formed by the gate, his bright green silk robe flapping as he whipped his chariot back and forth on a crazy course that seemed intent on doing the most damage possible. Until it hit the front of a shop and crashed inside, the camel creatures bucking and rearing and making enough noise to cut through even the noise of the crowd.

The driver jumped off, laughing, and disappeared into a tavern across the street, along with a girl in a skimpy outfit.

Leaving the merchant with the camel-filled shop to sort things out for himself.

And me to get hauled off the ground by an irate war mage.

“Thanks,” I told him. “I didn’t see—” I stopped, because Caleb wasn’t looking real concerned over my skinned knees right now. Caleb was looking the way Pritkin had a few times back when we’d first met.

Right before he tried to kill me.

“What?” I said, looking around for another chariot. But the street was clear—at least of maniacal vehicles. People were washing back into the lane, including the immigrant’s family scurrying to collect what remained of their belongings. Things were returning to what passed for normal around here.

But Caleb didn’t look like he thought so.

“Notice anything?” he hissed.

“What are you—” I stopped because I had. I’d just noticed something. Not something added, but something missing.

Or somebody.

“Where,” Caleb asked me through clenched teeth, “is that damned vampire?”